- You provide additional totems for your raid, and therefore, additional utility.- 10% Additional AP for the raid- Maelstrom weapon procs can be utilized to provide an emergency heal on a raid member, possibly preventing a wipe. I've seen it happen!- Capable of providing emergency off-tanking in most 5-mans while a healer combat resses the tank [if possible], or while the group burns down the last few percents of the boss- A very involved class. Lots to watch, lots to do, lots of fun!

Talent Build

http://wow335.gamestool.net/shamant....00000000000000 - This is a good introductory build with a bit of leg room if you want to move talent points around, mostly depending on your mana regeneration. Let's go over some "maybe" talents, and explain why others are 100% required.

Improved Shields & Static Shock - Improved Shields is both a DPS and a mana regen mechanics, but only one at any given time. If your mana generation is good, you can use Static Shock and Lightning Shield to provide extra DPS. The reason for this is because most of the time you'd be using Water Shield for the bonus mana regeneration. If you're really having mana trouble, Improved Shields can increase the mana generated by your Water Shield as well. If you have mana trouble, you are free to move the points in Static Shock elsewhere, but i would leave the points in Improved Shields for the extra mana.

Improved Storm Strike - This is a great mana regeneration mechanic. If you find yourself with absolutely zero mana troubles, you may take a point or two out of this and put it in Improved Fire Nova in the elemental tree for some additional DPS.

Dual Wield Specialization - You may take a point out of this and put it in Elemental Focus if you feel you have some serious mana trouble. I would highly advise against it, but if you have absolutely no mana in a fight, it's better to miss 2% of the time while constantly attacking than to not attack at all.

Elemental Fury - Pretty important because half of your damage is from spells of this nature. I wouldn't move points from this.

Improved Fire Nova - Once your gear starts to shape up and mana is less of an issue, you should move one point from Improved Stormstrike and Shamanistic Focus into this for the extra damage.

Class Analysis

Windfury Weapon is the flagship weapon enchant for Enhancement Shamans. On Molten, you don't have an internal cooldown. As a result, you should use Windfury on both weapons.There's almost no reason to not use Windfury on both weapons.

Flametongue Weapon - Don't use it. Windfury is bugged in a good way on Molten, so there's no point in using Flametongue.

Lava Lash - A simple instant offhand attack that deals a good amount of fire damage. This is fancy because it completely ignores armor. Yep. 100% Armor Penetration. Does bonus damage with Flametongue Weapon on your offhand, but extra Flametongue damage is outweighed by extra Windfury damage.

Stormstrike - A fantastic ability that damages with both of you weapons at once. It's not normalized like most attacks, so if your weapon has higher top-end damage [e.g, is a slower weapon] Stormstrike will do more damage. It procs Windfury and Flurry. It increases the damage of your next four nature spells. Use it. A lot.

Flame Shock - A true min-max ability, this will give you a marginal DPS increase, but an increase is an increase. Using this without clipping the DoT it puts on your target will be a DPS increase.

Earth Shock - When Flame Shock is ticking on your target, you'll want to use Earth Shock as your shock of choice when it comes time to use one. It does great damage and is extremely efficient if you have Shamanistic Focus.

Maelstrom Weapon - A great talent that you picked up at the end of the tree that you absolutely need. Each stack reduces the cast time of your next spell by 20%, up to 100% at 5 stacks. It can be used to get off an emergency heal to save the raid, or can be used to increase your DPS. Usually it will be the latter. Chain Lightning will provide more damage than Lightning Bolt in the earlier stages, but Lightning Bolt scales better than Chain Lightning. IN a single target environment, the ideal spell would be Lightning Bolt at higher gear levels, Chain Lightning at lower gear levels, if mana allows.

Feral Spirit - Summons two wolves that scale with your stats to provide additional DPS. Not much to say here other than to use this every time it's available.

Fire Nova - Does good damage, boosted by a lot of your talents, no reason not to use it.

In the early stages of gear, such as before your hit is capped, you'll want to follow this priority list. The reason for this is because if you don't have a lot of haste, your Attack Power isn't going to contribute as much to your damage. The more haste you get, the more useful Attack Power will be. Haste will always outweigh Attack power, even if it's ever so slightly. Crit past cap will push glancing blows off of the table which increases the benefit of haste and your auto attacks.

1. Hit Rating to 17%(16% if alliance)2. Haste3. Crit past "cap"4. Expertise to 11 (20 - 9 from talents, 20 is the cap on Molten)5. Crit to the "cap", using this formula from ElitistJerks: Maximum Critical Chance (MCC) = 76 – (Chance to be Dodged) - (Chance to be Parried) – (Chance to Miss) + 4.6. If you're behind your target like you should be, Chance to be Parried is 0.6. Attack Power7. Armor Penetration - Don't be afraid of it.

Once you have your hit capped, but you still need expertise, follow this priority list. At this point, we assume an average amount of haste is on your gear. At least 10%. If you're under 10%, Expertise overtakes Attack Power. Crit past cap will push glancing blows off of the table which increases the benefit of haste and your auto attacks.

1. Haste2. Crit past "cap"3. Attack Power4. Expertise to 11 (20 - 9 from talents, 20 is the cap on Molten)5. Crit to the "cap", using this formula from ElitistJerks: Maximum Critical Chance (MCC) = 76 – (Chance to be Dodged) - (Chance to be Parried) – (Chance to Miss) + 4.6. If you're behind your target like you should be, Chance to be Parried is 0.6. Armor Penetration - Don't be afraid of it.7. Hit Rating - until 25%

Once hit and expertise are capped, you'll just have to follow this order. At this point, we assume your Haste is better than 10%. At this point using Berserking & Black Magic as your enchants will still be more beneficial than dual Berserking. Once you're in the best gear you can get, dual berserking becomes a more feasible option. Mongoose will hold the same weight for much of your career, so it will just be personal preference. Crit past cap will push glancing blows off of the table which increases the benefit of haste and your auto attacks.

1. Haste2. Crit past "cap"3. Attack Power4. Crit to the cap, using this formula from ElitistJerks: Maximum Critical Chance (MCC) = 76 – (Chance to be Dodged) - (Chance to be Parried) – (Chance to Miss) + 4.6. If you're behind your target like you should be, Chance to be Parried is 0.5. Armor Penetration - Don't be afraid of it.

Glyphs, Gems and Enchants

Your choice of enchant should be either Mongoose, Berserking, or both. Black Magic is also a great enchant if you don't have an obscene amount of haste. There are a few ways you can use these:

1- Berserking on both weapons2- Mongoose on both weapons3- Berserking on one, Mongoose on the other.4 - Berserking on main hand, Black Magic on off hand.

I personally prefer Option 2. Depending on your stats, if you need haste use Black Magic, if you need more attack power use Berserking. If you're relatively neutral, use one of each. If you're at lower gear levels, you'll want Berserking and Black Magic. Black Magic's effectiveness slowly wanes as you get closer to the crit cap. If you're gemming with haste rather than crit, i would advise against using Black Magic. If your crit is over the cap from above, use Mongoose on both weapons. The crit from the agility bonus will reduce the frequency of glancing blows since there's no physical cap here. If mongoose pushes your crit over the cap, use mongoose on both weapons.

Enchants on the rest of your gear should follow this list, taken from ElitistJerks:

Use whatever minor glyphs you like. For gems, see this excerpt from ElitistJerks below. Personally i prefer haste over crit, however it's your preference. If you have high crit, use crit gems. If you have low crit, use haste gems. Hit is always nice since your offhand can still miss up to 25% hit. Since crits here will push glancing blows off the hit table, the more crit the better once you're past the crit cap. Although haste has a higher stat priority, you'll want to balance crit and haste if you're past the crit cap. A lot of your gear will have haste, so putting crit gems will help you out.

In general terms, Hit and Crit gems will have the highest return for investment. Shaman that are geared in Sunwell items will probably find that Agility or just AP gems are superior. Simulation is required to find the best fit for your gear.

[Relentless Earthsiege Diamond] is the best choice for a metagem as it only requires 1 sub-optimum blue gem. However if you have 2 socket bonuses that you want to activate that require blue gems then the [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond] is an acceptable alternative. These gems will scale with your crit rating. The 3% crit damage can be roughly approximated to raise your DPS by 0.03 * Crit Rate. At 30% crit rate this amounts to roughly 1% gain in damage dealt.

[Thundering Skyflare Diamond] gives 480 haste for 6 seconds. This is your second choice for meta gems as it appears to have a 1 minute cooldown on the proc. Shaman with lower crit rates will benefit slightly more from this gem over the RED and CSD.

Please post a civil response if you would like to suggest an amendment to the guide.Even if you're right, if you're a douche about it, i won't add or remove it from the guide.